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Arab News
29-06-2025
- Arab News
Architectural Digest Middle East lists Lahore's Wusaaq hotel among world's best
ISLAMABAD: The Architectural Digest (Ad) Middle East magazine, part of the Condé Nast portfolio, has compiled a list of 31 best hotels in the world in 2025, naming Lahore's Wusaaq hotel among them. Launched in 2015, the bi-monthly magazine spotlights exceptional design by Middle Eastern and international talents, provides an exclusive view into the world's most beautiful spaces and inspires readers to refresh their lives. These 31 exotic hotels, located in 18 countries, brim with exceptional design ranging from a cinematic new Roman address to a Saudi resort that looks like tiny UFOs have landed on the Red Sea coast to exotic properties in Paris, Dubai, Doha, Mumbai, Luxor and London. Tucked behind bougainvillea-covered walls in Lahore's Gulberg neighborhood, Wusaaq is a mid-century residence-turned-soulful guest house that was restored by Faaria Rehman Salahuddin as a tribute to her late mother. 'Quietly luxurious and entirely personal, Wusaaq reflects a kind of hospitality that values presence over polish – a rare, radiant stay in the heart of a lively city,' reads the AD magazine article, published on June 26. The 1950s Pakistani home has been preserved with minimal intervention – original porcelain tiles, brass fittings, and retro light switches remain intact. Each of the five rooms is named after a flower, with pietra dura inlaid keys inscribed in Urdu and English, according to the publication. In the courtyard, fruit and a sprawling peepal tree offer shade where guests gather for breakfast served on heirloom crockery. Inside, window chiks, a traditional kitchen dolly, custom furniture, and contemporary Pakistani art blend memory with modern comfort. In a post on Instagram, Wusaaq said it celebrated the listing. 'We are overwhelmed and humbled by the love and appreciation sent to us by our patrons, guests, friends and family,' the hotel said. A post shared by WUSAAQ (@wusaaq) The list, according to the AD Middle East magazine, offers a space for all sorts of travelers from city break lovers to those who prefer nothing more than an escape into the wilderness.
Arab News
16-06-2025
- General
- Arab News
In parched Karachi, mosques give back to the earth by saving ablution water
KARACHI: On a sweltering afternoon in Karachi's Gulberg neighborhood earlier this month, rows of men lined up under shaded arcades at a seminary to perform wudu, the ritual ablution Muslims perform before prayers. In a city battered by chronic water scarcity, each drop of this cleansing water is precious but until last year, gallons of it flowed straight into Karachi's aging sewer lines, lost forever. Now, at over 20 mosques scattered across this sprawling megacity of more than 20 million people, this water has found a second purpose. It is being stored underground to help replenish the city's shrinking aquifers, drop by precious drop. The unconventional fix is the brainchild of Dr. Syed Imran Ahmed, who heads the Panjwani Hisaar Water Institute at Karachi's NED University. He convinced the administrators of Jamia Uloom Islamia Banuri, one of Pakistan's biggest seminaries, to store ablution water in underground wells instead of letting it drain away. And what started as a pilot at the Banuri mosque has since spread to more than 20 mosques citywide. 'A lot of people go to the mosque and use water there without any thinking. Now this water directly goes to wastewater, so it becomes part of wastewater,' Dr. Ahmed told Arab News. 'But what if you divert it to a tank or to a well in the mosque?' Karachi is Pakistan's economic engine but also one of its thirstiest cities. Official estimates show it needs about 1,200 million gallons per day but gets barely half that on average. As residents bore deeper and deeper wells to tap the ground beneath them, they have left behind hollow pockets in the earth, literal sinkholes that are swallowing parts of the city. A landmark study by Singapore's Nanyang Technological University found Karachi ranks second in the world for urban land subsidence, just behind China's Tianjin. Between 2014 and 2020 alone, parts of the city sank by as much as 15 centimeters due to excessive groundwater pumping. 'And that rate of sinking is higher than the sea level rise due to climate change. Now they are calling them bowl cities ... the city is like a bowl because different areas of it are sinking.' said Yasir Husain, founder of the Climate Action Center in Karachi. The mosque project, he explained, addressed this destructive cycle in which countless homes had bore ever deeper into the earth for water. 'People have on every street two or three houses which have bores, and they suck water from the ground,' he said. 'And they've gone deeper and deeper.' Recharging wells, however small, could help restore the balance, Hussain added. OTHER FAITHS, OTHER CITIES The idea isn't unique to Karachi. From India to Indonesia, communities have long explored ways to reuse water from places of worship. In India's Hyderabad, the centuries-old Charminar mosque installed a water recycling system in 2019 that filters ablution water for reuse in gardens. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a green mosque project uses treated wudu water for toilet flushing and irrigation. In the Middle East, where water stress is even more acute, countries like the UAE have pioneered mosque greywater reuse for landscaping, transforming prayer halls into unexpected allies for urban water security. At the Jamia Masjid Falah in the city's Gulberg neighborhood, Abdullah Malik, a mosque committee member, said he could see the water recycling results firsthand. 'It's essential that any sweet water used should be saved instead of being wasted into the gutter lines,' he said, estimating that 700–800 people performed ablution at his mosque daily. Even saving three liters per person could mean thousands of liters recharging the earth every day, Malik added, a small, steady buffer against Karachi's mounting water emergency. Indeed, encouraged by the community response, Dr. Ahmed has mapped 27 flood-prone areas in the city where monsoon rain can also be stored in recharge wells. He hopes local authorities will greenlight the proposal soon. 'I think that these 27 wells would be soon active, god willing,' he said. Meanwhile, supporters like Husain believe mosques and local leaders could play a crucial role in changing habits. 'The water which is used for wudu [ablution] will not end up in your gutter,' he said. 'That water is precious.' No doubt, for Karachi, every drop saved, and returned to the earth, is a promise that the city's lifeline might yet endure.
Arab News
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
‘The Pakistani Vibe': Inside the imagined worlds of renowned art director Hashim Ali
LAHORE: Tucked away in a quiet lane in Pakistan's cultural capital of Lahore, Hashim Ali's studio feels less like a workspace and more like a time capsule from the Mughal era. Large Persian rugs are spread out on the floors and ornate jharokhas overlook walls painted in beige and maroon and covered in wood panels and miniature paintings, creating a world suffused with nostalgia and opulence. Every corner of the studio reflects the vision of an art director who doesn't just design sets but builds atmosphere. The space is both sanctuary and stage, where centuries-old aesthetics come vividly to life in the service of modern, visual storytelling. One of Pakistan's most renowned Pakistani visual artists and art directors, Ali is a Visual Communication Design graduate from the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) institute in Lahore. Over the years, he has come to be known for his work in fashion, film, and music and is celebrated for his creative vision and attention to detail, particularly in creating visually stunning and intricate sets. His ability to blend historic grandeur with modern maximalism has won him several accolades over the years, including the Fashion Art Director award at the 2024 Hum Style Awards and the Pride of Performance Award in 2021. In an interview with Arab News at his studio in Lahore's posh Gulberg neighborhood, Ali, 34, said his passion for visual storytelling came from a history of childhood bullying. 'When you are bullied, you have to make [up] stories, you have to read stories, so I would get lost in fairytales,' he said. 'I would just start imagining what this world is, what these people are, what is this fantasy that exists out of this world? It started from there.' The stories he read, full of mythology and folklore, led him to start thinking about his identity as a Pakistani and a South Asian. 'Then I was like, 'Why can't we rebuild these memories and these spaces and these places?'' Ali's own studio is a recreation of spaces of the past, a Mughal court in miniature — crafted not from marble and sandstone, but from cardboard, fabric, and imagination. With hand-painted arches, makeshift jalis, and richly colored drapes, the space evokes the grandeur of a bygone empire while laying bare its theatrical artifice. The illusion is deliberate: a paper palace blurring the line between history and performance and reflecting South Asia's enduring nostalgia for lost splendor and the way identity in the region is often reconstructed through fragments — of memory, of myth, of art. What one then sees is not just a recreation of the past but a reinterpretation, inviting a dialogue between heritage and reinvention: 'If Hollywood can create all of this [set design] and we think as Pakistanis that we can't do any of this, then we're at fault. Because we did create the Taj Mahal. We did create the Lahore Fort … If we could do it then, we can do it now.' 'COMBINED MEMORY' One of Ali's most cherished creations was the set for the song 'Pasoori,' the first Coke Studio number to hit one billion views on YouTube Music and the most searched song globally on Google in 2022, the year of its release. Ali, the production designer and art director of the set, crafted it as a communal space, with the bohemian aesthetic of the set, characterized by vibrant colors and eclectic elements, complementing the song's fusion of reggaeton beats with classical South Asian instruments like the rubab. Ali describes the aesthetic as 'the Pakistani vibe,' exemplified by a new generation that had grown up in the era of globalization and social media and was reclaiming public spaces and dressing up and conducting themselves in ways that merged their cultural heritage with contemporary elements. 'It's so interesting that now when I'm sitting and I'm scrolling on Instagram or TikTok and I see these reels of girls wearing either 'saris' and 'ghagras' and they're dancing in Lahore, in old Lahore,' Ali said. But the project closest to Ali's heart is hidden away in the winding, narrow streets of Lahore's historic Gali Surjan Singh near Delhi Gate. It is a concept store, Iqbal Begum, imagined as a tribute to his late dadi or grandmother, a mathematics teacher who passed away in 2014. The store has been built in a centuries-old home that Ali rented from a woman who has lived there before the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan. The walls are adorned with framed pictures of Iqbal Begum and the shop strewn with things that belonged to her, including old table clocks and dial phones and a tub of Nivea cream, a bottle of Oil of Olay lotion, and a coin purse framed together. Ali remembered growing up surrounded by the stories his grandmother told him, including about the violence of the partition. 'She told me a story about how she lost her favorite pen and our house was burned down in front of her eyes and the sense of belonging started happening,' Ali said. 'From that story, this thing of holding on to objects, holding on to people, holding on to stories became very important.' The concept store is thus not only a way to tell the story of Iqbal Begum but also to create shared memories. 'So, for me, every time I tell a story, I'm passing on my memory to someone else, and when they go and tell someone, in a way, it's almost like my dadi is still alive,' Ali added. And the process is two-way, because people show up with their stories also and can connect with the items they see in the store: 'Then it becomes like a combined memory.' Ultimately, it all connects back to the idea of Pakistan for Ali and to preserving its national, personal and collective histories into tangible, emotionally resonant experience. 'I kind of equated it to the bigger grandparent or the larger mother, which is Pakistan, that slowly, slowly all these amazing things that Pakistanis and Pakistan has done, we're slowly letting them fade away,' he said. 'The idea from this dadi telling stories to a child has become about this child telling those stories or trying to tell those stories to the world and saying, 'Hey, we're Pakistan and we're a beautiful country and we do all these things apart from what you're used to hearing about.'.'
